I woke up at 6:00am on Friday 8 April, and feeling a little unsure of whether I was nervous, anxious, excited or just ready to go back to bed. I was due to start at The Gladstone Observer at 8:00am and was not really certain of what my day was going to look like.

My working day started with a news meeting at 8:30 where all the editorial journalists go to tell the deputy editor stories they would be working on for the day. It was a big news day in Gladstone with a tragic death reported, a rally going on in the city and announcement of the development of a new supermarket in town.

I was teamed up with a senior journalist who started me off with a story based on a Facebook post she had stumbled across the night before. It was a bar manager who had gone on a rant about the lack of respect of his female wait staff, so we took to the pubs and clubs in Gladstone to see if it were an issue around our town. We drove around interviewing staff and managers, and were several times not given the opportunity to interview some establishments.
We got back to the office and I went to start writing my story but it was time to go again to cover another story. We went to The Happy Herb Shop to interview their manager and some local mothers as the shop had recently invited mums to come and breastfeed in their shop without judgement. I got to chat to the mums who said the space was really comforting and I also got to have a play with their newborn babies!

Before we headed back to the office we needed to do some vox pops, asking locals whether they thought the development of the new supermarket was necessary. What an interesting experience – I had people more than willing to offer an opinion, others who wouldn’t even talk to me and even one guy told me that I was wasting my time getting people’s opinions because it was not going to make any difference.

I eventually got back to the office and ran into 10 million computer issues before I was able to begin writing my stories. My Happy Herb Shop story was so fun to write and was very well received by the editor who only made minor changes – the story will be published sometime this week!

All in all I had a very interesting day and with a million things going on, the day flew by and it was 5pm before I knew it.